Hell is betrayal
by Argent
Summary: // Lana isn’t really intrested in their defintion of hell. The days she allows herself to remember she lives in her own


Hell is betrayal  
  
// Lana isn't really intrested in their defintion of hell. The days she allows herself to remember she lives in her own//  
  
PG-13 ish  
  
argentlife at yahoo dot com  
  
Sometimes she wonders if they think about it. What happened to them, why it happened.  
  
Inside she thinks that everyone really knows, they just don't speak the words. Because they were all there. Lana remembers it all. Sometimes, if she concentrates hard enough she can still taste the bitter taste of coffee on her tounge.  
  
She sits now, behind her desk. Back where it all began. Smallville High, the only place in the little town that hasn't changed. Except for her. Everyone else is gone, spread around the world as the saying goes. Lana is still here. Teaching at the school she, in her youth, had referred to as hell and heaven all mashed in one place.  
  
She still think of it as hell. But only when she passes the office of the Torch. Because the little sign on the door makes her remember. Only she doesn't want to. So she never goes there, avoids it but is still drawned to it like a moth to the flames.  
  
She thinks of it as heaven sometimes too. When her students sits silent in their desk, reading copies of books she thinks is necessary. Jane Austen, Ernest Hemingway and more. She cares little for the notes passed between desk because she is still young enough to remember a time when she herself passed notes exactly the same way.  
  
Lana tries to think of herself as a responsable being. She cares about her students, juggles her duties as a teacher with the ones of a wife and mother with care. Everything has to be perfect. No one is to be hurt. Because she has hurt people before and the feelings of guilt still lays heavy on her slender shoulders.  
  
She has never forgotten herself, and if she thinks about it she doesn't think that they have forgiven her either.  
  
They never speak to each other. At graduation they had promised to keep in touch, long distance be damned. But Lana's phone never rang because the week after graduation their friendship broke.  
  
The Talon is closed now. She drives past it from time to time. Remembers her dream to keep it open forever. She lost that dream. All because her own stupidety. And when she drives by she also remembers the last day they had gathered there.  
  
The four of them. Sitting on a table in the corner of the room. Mugs of forgotten coffee empty plates infront of them, remebering their now lost highschool days. The pranks, the terror that was living in Smallville with it metoer freaks and green stones. The proom and chasing after stories.  
  
Then the uncomfortable silence. The fidgeting of Chloe's hands.  
  
She stares at the papers lying on her desk, regretting ever given the assignment to her students. Lana isn't really intrested in their defintion of hell. The days she allows herself to remember she lives in her own.  
  
Her husband often ask why she never speaks with her friends, after all he remembers them too. He went to the same school. Even admitted that he had a crush on Chloe once. But what can she tell him, that she was the one that broke the circle, that she was the one that couldn't accept?  
  
No, Lana doesn't think she can tell him the truth. Because he would never understand that his perfect wife not always was that perfect. That she once had fallen in love with the wrong man, at the wrong moment.  
  
That the man hadn´t loved her. But someone else. That she hadn't cared that the other woman had been her best friend.  
  
She begins to grade papers, reading them slowly. Making small comments in the marginal when she thinks its needed. Shivers when she reads Jamie's. Hell is betrayal. Remembers the violent thrusting, the feel of Lex inside her. Making her scream his name over and over. Never speaking hers. Only the other.  
  
Remembers the table in the Talon. How she had stared at the empty plates that only minutes ago had been filled with muffins and pies and wondered if that was her. Wanting everyone else to feel as empty as her inside.  
  
Saying the truth only to hurt. Never expecting to be hurt in return. Just wanting to be whole again. Seeing the look of pain in green hazel eyes, the slow building of tears. The violent shock in Pete's and Clark's faces. Remebering wondering how she ever thought that they would take her side.  
  
The raise of Chloe's hand, expecting a slap in the face not the cold diamond glittering on the other girl's finger. Then the tears. Clark telling her to leave. The one who always rescued her abondoning her.  
  
Lana tries to clear her mind of the images, Returns to her assignments. Silent tears rolling down her chin. Can't clear her mind. Remembers instead how the others fell apart, no one forgiving everyone just hating.  
  
A vivid circle, never ending. Everyone taking sides, all on Chloe's side. Because she was the victim, not the offenders. Like Lana and Lex.  
  
Except for one.  
  
Everyday Lana buys the papers, the Daily Planet, whatever gossip magazine she can get her hands on. She hids them from her husband, figuring he would never understand the perfectly cut edges where articles once had been.  
  
She brings the articles to work, locks herself in her office and opens the third drawer. Always runs her hand over the three books before she pulls out the one that she needs. Once she heard that serial killers always saved something from the victims, and everytime she remembers that rumor she wonders if that is what she is doing.  
  
They are her foto albums. Her try to still be a part of their lives. The first one are filled with articles, all written by the shy farmboy she once had thought herself in love with. Like a watchful mother she has followed his career. From the University paper to the Daily Planet. Lana has saved them all, carefully glued on the white pages.  
  
The second one is filled with colorfull images from from sport magazines, Pete with his team or alone. Every win carefully scripted. Every loss equally scripted, only in more subtle paint. Black instead of red.  
  
The third one is the hardest to maintain. Lana has already filled two other just the same. The faces of the worlds most powerfull couple is always everywhere and sometimes she has a hard time catching up. Chloe and Alexander Luthor. Lex and Chloe.  
  
Everytime she sees their names linked Lana still has a hard time wondering how Chloe could forgive him.  
  
When she couldn't forgive Lana.  
  
The last paper graded and her eyes falls on the inventation lying on her copy of Wuthering Heights. The envelope is cream, the letters inside written in fake gold. Her ten years reunion. And she wonders if the others will come.  
  
If she would be able to look them in the eyes.  
  
Hell is betrayal, betrayal is hell.  
  
She gets up, walks the empty halls, pass her old locker on her way to her old car that waits alone in the parking lot. And Lana wonders if Lex ever forgives himself. If he feels the guilt as much as she.  
  
Fin 


End file.
